poem – Page 113 – poems 2 die for

WE SEE

SET APART

on the farm
so isolated
set apart

from everything;
absolutely

    interconnected

AT LONG RANGE

poem
is
inside out

just
so happens to be

when you
frame it
in a certain way
it’s going
to start to appear
most upside-down

but
wearing this poem
out of range, at
long distance

hard for you
to see the target let
alone loose
a shot at all

and spooky Wolfgang
Pauli being
in the audience
actually, in the
very front row
plumb in the centre

not going to help
your echo location
in size
shape or
form

what with all those
quantum entanglements
and collapsed
wave-fronts

every
moment of delivery
makes me think then
dream of
standing before you
in an alternate universe

where without the
uncertainty of your
mode of
analysis, manner
of reception

there is no point
to this game at all
I

SHE

she
is a
pocket whirlwind

one drop
of her perfume
and tsunamis
reign

ate my heart once
then came
the audacity
to berate
its flavour

pure gut punch
and of how
it is all
put together

I have
said
nothing as yet

WITH APHRODITE

I held
a long interview with Aphrodite

peace
love
sex

these we touched upon
sinking ciders by the poolside
(wedge of lemon
jammed tightly into
the neck of the bottle)

in the course of which
frank and honest
and open-
ended discussion

the goddess revealed much
of her immortal self.

JUICE

It must have changelinged me
all that juice
goodfellow Puck did spray
around so
most liberally
throughout the play

that I fell qute captuted,
sucked into the forest action,
Titania above me
and I, beautifully ass-
headed so
bottomed beneath

and speaking those words
ss if nee again, constantly,
forever thus
embowered

that magic so vigorous
as I crashed through
every barrier

softly dissolved
this last, ultimate wall.

IN WONDERLAND

TO SHAKESPEARE’S WOODS

SELFLESS

I wanted
to leave selfless

but there
was the fruit
half-eaten
at my feet

and there was
the serpent
I was already
starting
to morph into

and there were the skyscrapers
and Tarot towers plunging upwards
about to
dominate the skyline

and there was Eve
dark with all
her fresh mythology

against which no option
but to delve downwards
mine
that treasure

soar with the schene
of things now aspiring
beyond the sky
to
name the stars
as they
thus multiplied

on route to our conquest
of the heavens.

ALICE UNDERGROWTH

Lasker
Capablanca
Fischer

it’s a grid for turning mind
into machine

a lattice that reads
like a labyrinth

fair enough
when I dream chess I am
deep within the Alice undergrowth

dee meets dum and
it is internecine war
because they are genetically
divided
by the colour of
their suits

inside this tiny teapot
the technicolour inner
world of many
a world champion

and there
the kettle they got to
run the show

down in that undergrowth
there are the pieces
nut none have as yet
evolved
aa far as basic
moves are concerned

aa yet no leopard crawl, crab
scuttle or anything vaguely
approaching
snakes and ladders serpent
swallow
and slither

is chess
not the perfect practice
wrapped in a nutshell
for your
average ambush predator

love that phrase, but
why Oh why
when I go charging from
square to
square across rank down
file liks
Napoleon at Austerlitz

does it always escape me;
must I always
fail to remember it?